


It's A Jigsaw Puzzle (If Puzzles Spelled Trouble)

by CookieCatSU



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Centered around the idea of Family, Character Study, Gen, Let's be honest, Scrooge McDuck is a jerk, but he loves his fam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieCatSU/pseuds/CookieCatSU
Summary: A good ol' Uncle Scrooge view on family.
Relationships: & Everyone Else - Relationship, & The Triplets, Della Duck & Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck & Scrooge McDuck, Scrooge McDuck & Launchpad McQuack & Webby Vanderquack
Comments: 33
Kudos: 72





	It's A Jigsaw Puzzle (If Puzzles Spelled Trouble)

Scrooge McDuck liked money. He pursued it as if it were his sustenance, hoarded it like he'd never see another nickel. He spent hours polishing each coin, never failed to notice when a single penny was out of place.

Money had always been more important than people. The _whole_ world knew he'd rather muddle through a task himself then spend a single cent more than was strictly necessary, and if he did something charitable, it was an accident.

Regardless...

There _were_ people he cared about; people he'd do anything for. People he'd sacrifice life and limb for.

People he'd give his fortune to save, if it came down to that.

The circle of people, he keeps close (as close as Scrooge McDuck can), that he loves, and protects, and cherishes, is small. His family is small.

At first, his family only encompasses his parents, and his sisters, the ones who remain always by his side, who join him in harebrained schemes hardly thought through. The ones who teach him valuable life lessons he couldn't understand at the time they were given, who teach him the value of a penny and the elusive animal which was elbow greasing, back breaking hard work.

His sisters move away. He leaves the house, in pursuit of his own success. His own truth. He never visits, and he can hardly bring himself to look his father in the eye when he does see him: so angry and put out and feeling under appreciated.

He's isolated for a long time. So focused on making it big, in making it, _period_. He carves out a life for himself, traveling from place to place, innovating and working, working hard, using every ounce of blood and sweat and tears as fodder to push himself further. Eventually, he has enough to start something, something big and meaningful and lasting.

He makes friends everywhere he goes, but none quite last. There's never anyone to cling to, because once the deal is up they always leave, with a wave and an adios, and we'll see ya once again. He meets prospectors in Cape Town, spies in St. Canard, lumberjacks in the woods near Spoonerville. A long trail of left acquaintances in his wake.

He keeps it that way. Keeps himself lonely and distant, because then it's easier to move on. He only cared for family, and they weren't family.

* * *

He coins McDuck enterprises. It starts as a tiny little business sourced out of an old warehouse he'd scrounged up the funds to purchase. Small. Nothing more than a wavering dream in his minds eye.

He hunkers down and he works, hard, as he always does. He signs deals and he haggles and he struggles, until he can break the surface tension of the pool and swim to the top.

He makes a life for himself, with nothing but his own two hands. He carves a path: by being smarter than the smarties, tougher than the toughies, and sharper than the sharpies.

He takes over the family mansion, and makes it his own. It doesn't bother him that he's alone. It doesn't bother him that there's dozens of rooms, empty, vacant, whispering with voices long gone.

It doesn't bother him in the slightest. He was used to being alone.

He hasn't really had a family in a long time.

Then Hortense returns to him, in the form of a ragged plea and two ducklings clutched to her chest. His family returns, in the form of one Della and Donald Duck.

He's so happy to see them, to welcome them.

Then his family is of three. Small. Manageable.

He pulls them under his wing, does his best to protect and teach. For a time, it remains. For a time, he's happy.

Hortense dies. Della runs off, taking the Spear of Selene with her. Donald, angry and embittered, packs up and leaves.

He looks at Scrooge, Uncle Scrooge, with the same look Scrooge had leveled at his own father. Accusatory. Hateful. It says, _it's your fault she's gone_. It says, _I knew you could never really care_.

Scrooge, angry and hurting, as well, only proves him right.

He distanced himself once more. Returns to work, to his company, his only other passion in life. It remains that way for nearly ten years.

For ten years he's alone.

* * *

He isn't sure exactly when during that period of time he does, (it couldn't have been more than a few years - ~~then again, he is getting old, gray, and maybe possibly senile~~ ), but eventually he meets Ms. Beakley. She'd been headstrong and stubborn, graying just a tiny bit around the edges just like him. She forces herself into the weave, interjecting her presence though he makes clear he'd rather be left alone.

He remembers that she'd always been levelheaded, and cool tempered, and nearly the antithesis to him.

"Can't ya just leave me alone" He glared at her. He wanted to go back to being miserable and lonely. He wanted to go sulk, and he could only do that effectively if he was by himself.

She'd only raised a single eyebrow.

"You sound like a petulant child" He glares harder at her, because he _didn't_ , and of course he was upset (he's lost all his family, pushed them away, and of course someone so awful deserved to be alone), "And no, I will not" She runs her finger along the counter beside her, coming back with a thick layer of dust, so thick it looked like carpet. She stares at it with a mild look of disgust. " _Someone_ needs to help you care for this enormous place"

So, Ms. Beakley remains.

With her comes a sudden bright spot in his recently stormy life, in the form of an excitable young granddaughter who climbed through vents and clambered across the bookshelves and sometimes dropped from the ceiling to land with a clamorous crash onto his shoulders.

He pretends to find the whole affair distasteful. Though, truthfully, he welcomes the new company. He welcomes the sounds of happy shouts and tumbling laughter, of breathless conversations booming down empty, empty halls.

He'd missed the commotion.

Sometimes he grabs her by the armpits as she tries to run past him. He tells her long, winding stories, and she sits attentive, hand pressed to her cheek as she oohs and aahs.

He sees _Della_ and he sees Donald in her, and he tries to keep her distant, at arms length, but he can't. He can't.

He tries to keep them away, afraid to lose them because anyone he allows to get close, he loses, but he can't. He just can't.

He cares too much for them.

Some people called him heartless. Most people, actually. He was greed driven, penny pinching, stone cold Scrooge McDuck. Except, he's not.

He's not compassionate, per say. He's not the kindest man, nor very giving.

But he cares for family.

Cares for _his_ family. Too much, perhaps.

* * *

It becomes considerably harder, to keep this distance, when the triplets arrive. Donald refuses to let him anywhere near them at first, and Scrooge doesn't push the issue, for a time. He has Beakley, and Webbigail (and _family_ is a terrible _trouble_ that's not worth struggling through).

Then they're on his doorstep, and he's deemed babysitter for the day.

He tells himself he won't get attached. He does.

The boys are young. Young and rambunctious and adventurous (not as sheltered as Webbigail, who's seen the outside of the mansion twice in the entirety of her short life). They remind him of his love of adventure. They remind him how much he loved the feel of adrenaline pumping in his veins, the excitement of treasure inches from his fingertips, the rush of a headlong dive across a gaping chasm.

They remind him of how much he's missed, how much he's lost. Just like Della, just as willful, just as rash.

He holds the Lost Jewel in his hands, grinning ear to ear.

Their house boat is destroyed. Scrooge extends them an invitation to stay in his home, at least until it's fixed. Donald agrees grudgingly, and it's not perfect, but it's progress.

So, his home is suddenly filled with the pattering of four pairs of duckling feet. Things are broken on nearly a daily basis, lamps and TVs, cracked, shattered, from their shenanigans. Scrooge wants to be angry, but he can't. Not for long.

He doesn't mind.

He doesn't mind when Louie let's himself into his study, squeezing through the crack in the door so he can stand at his shoulder, sipping a can of pep and looking bored, asking silly questions about the company books. He doesn't mind when Huey joins him late at night in the kitchen, unable to sleep as well, and they sit in comfortable silence as they nurse glass cups, his of scotch and Huey's with milk. He doesn't even mind when Dewey rushes to speak with him though he told him he was busy, and Webby trips him up while he's distracted, as if it was all some villainous ploy the whole time.

He doesn't even mind the heavy looks Donald levels his way when they happen to pass each other, at least, not quite. He's truthfully so glad he's returned, so happy he's come back, that he's willing to endure them.

Donald's the first family member to ever come back to him.

The first to return to him; the first to _stay_.

He has a family of 6 now. It's small. He prefers it that way, he thinks. Small, easy to manage, and keep close and safe.

It doesn't remain that way.

* * *

A collection begins, just as precious or even more so than his physical treasures.

He stumbles across Launchpad by accident. Also in a literal accident.

The duck crashed his car, a run down little truck that blew greasy black smoke from it's tail pipe, paint job patchy green, rusting and chipping, into Scrooge McDuck's limo. The driver had t-boned it at an intersection, though Scrooge clearly had the right of way.

He'd jumped out of the back of the limo, angry, shaking and ready to chew someone out. Launchpad stumbled out of his own car, bumbling and apologetic. Rather optimistic too, for someone who'd just gotten in a crash. Oh, and was being shouted at by a very angry Scottish man.

"Ya idiot! Look at this mess! What were ye thinking?"

"I have no idea, sir" He smiles, pleasant and friendly (and very, very empty), before gazing at Scrooge's limo, "Oh, nice ride, by the way. You must be rich!"

That really throws him for a loop.

He isn't sure how it happens, exactly, but Launchpad ends up employed as his driver.

"You're going soft, Scrooge" He hisses, standing in front of the mirror in his study.

It's true, of course. Launchpad was hardly competent at his job (the driving itself was fine, rather good, actually, but he always, always crashed, Scrooge would learn), but he simply couldn't bring himself to fire him. He was such a well meaning young man, so full of life.

And he gets along with the children so well.

Louie ropes him into the occasional scheme, and Dewey rides on his shoulders and pumps his fists and howls with delight, as Launchpad sprints down the stairwell and through the halls, making airplane noises and gunfire sounds.

They love him, and Scrooge finds, that soon enough, he does too.

He snaps into place in their little family like a missing puzzle piece.

* * *

Gyro doesn't fit quite so well. He's the opposite of well meaning Launchpad, vastly intelligent and bitter. Lonely.

He's very lonely.

Scrooge meets Gyro Gearloose for the first time at the docks of St. Canard. He'd clearly been at sea for awhile, if the mussed look of his feathers were any indication. He drags a single crate across the dock, albeit with immense difficulty. He could be no older than 17.

When he spots Scrooge watching him, he glares acidly back at him, the look filled with a crackling, acerbic hate. Anger. He thinks he might see some pain there, too, fragile and clouded with spite.

Scrooge turns away, turns to meet his associate, turns to give the young man some _space_.

The next time he saw Gyro was a month later. He had a little machine clipped to his belt, with glowing red lights, and a box of who _knew_ what clutched in his hands (prototypes, they'd been prototypes, evidently). He looked thinner, ragged, hair cut short.

He was there for a job interview.

Scrooge is surprised when he's interrupted half way through a business deal in the same building. A giant printer, having gained sentience, crashes through the wall of the little office.

Scrooge remembers the whole affair, how Camil Garris, owner of the company, had scrambled from her chair, rushing to the opposite end of the room, how he'd jumped to action, ready to tussle with the giant, leaky tub of ink.

He also remembers how surprised he was when he saw the young man, hat missing and tie askew, right on it's heels, out of breath and screaming hysterically for it to just _stop_.

He doesn't get the job. Camil, shaking, hunched in the corner, orders Gyro out. Murmuring, about the danger. About how insane he was, how insane he is.

Scrooge, as opposed to Camil's disgust, finds himself intrigued.

"Excuse me, please. I'll be right back"

He followed after Gyro. The young man glares at Scrooge, like he knows he's about to be judged. Admonished. He's supposed to be.

Instead, Scrooge offers him a job.

He saw a lot of himself in that boy. All Scrooge, the self assuredness, and the determination… the isolation. The loneliness.

Gyro wipes at his eyes, shoulders shaking. He glares at Scrooge, and he sees the pain, of failure, of trying one's best and failing regardless.

"I don't need _handouts_ , old man. I'm the most genius scientist of my age" He's vain, egotistical, but he can also hear the defensiveness, barely hidden. He can hear the need to be believed.

The need for it to be true.

He hears himself, declaring his independence, his worth.

"Not a handout, boy. An _opportunity_ "

Scrooge finds himself quickly claiming him as one of his own. Whether he wants him to or not.

So, the family grows.

* * *

The family continues to expand. The small core, the nucleus, finds new editions added frequently, tacking onto the tattered edges of what was once broken.

Selene.

Storkules.

Ms. Quackfaster.

Fenton.

That odd headless horse creature.

All pulled into the weave.

* * *

Then Della returns.

And the picture is complete.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I wrote this two months ago, actually. I was just trying to get a feel for Scrooge's character, but have this anyway.


End file.
